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Anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant rallies grow in Europe

After last week’s deadly terror attacks in Paris, rallies calling for stricter asylum and immigration policies are gaining strength across the continent.

Supporters of PEGIDA, which stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamification of the West, march in Leipzig, Germany, on Monday. The group wants tighter restrictions on immigration and limits on the acceptance of foreign refugees and asylum seekers. (Jens Schlueter / GETTY IMAGES)

Germany, along with northern European countries, is experiencing massive influxes of migrants from conflict zones in the Middle East and North Africa. Vast numbers of Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis and others caught up in war, persecution and poverty are all trying to settle in wealthier European countries to begin new lives.

German President Joachim Gauck attended a vigil on Tuesday, organized by Muslim groups, for the Paris victims, along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. He pleaded for tolerance. German leaders have vehemently condemned the rise of groups like PEGIDA and are struggling to control and squash the movement.

“Immigration makes Germany more multi-faceted — religiously, culturally and mentally. We stand against any form of demonization or exclusion,” Gauck said, reported Bloomberg.

In France, where French-born brothers who claim to have links to Al Qaeda in Yemen carried out a massacre of 12 at the Charlie Hebdo satirical news magazine — and an associate of theirs was responsible for the murder of four Jewish men at a Kosher supermarket — Muslims have felt a growing backlash.

Abdallah Zekri, head of the National Observatory Against Islamophobia, told The Associated Press that two days after the shootings at Charlie Hebdo, 16 places of worship around France were attacked by firebombs, gunshots or pig’s heads — an insult to those who don’t eat pork.

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